Israel Studies Review

The months since October 7, 2023, have been the most trying for Israel Studies in recent memory. Even at the best of times, one would be hard-pressed to find areas of study that provoke more heated controversies. The ricochets of October 7th and its aftermath, however, have transformed the academic environment to the extent that those seeking dispassionate knowledge about Israel are often left wanting.

The aftermath of the 7 October Hamas attack on Israel has seen a sharp increase in boycott initiatives against Israeli academic institutions and scholars. In response, the Samuel Neaman Institute for National Policy Studies has launched the Scholar Shield Project, which aims to collect data on the academic boycott and divestment phenomenon, analyze it, and provide recommendations on how to counter it (Neaman Institute 2024).

The profound impact of the 7 October attack in Israel, which resulted in 1,200 casualties, the kidnapping of 252 civilians, sexual and gender-based violence, and the displacement of thousands from localities surrounding Gaza (Human Rights Council 2024), significantly altered the sociopolitical landscape. Following that attack, Israel launched a harsh and aggressive military war in Gaza, resulting in the deaths of thousands of children, women, and innocent civilians, the displacement of about two million Palestinians, the arrests of thousands who underwent severe torture, and the destruction of hundreds of cultural, health, education, and religious institutions and created an ongoing humanitarian crisis (UNCTD 2024).

The outbreak of campus protests after the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October 2023 intensified the debate regarding Israel on campus. Protests organized by Students for Justice in Palestine and other groups sometimes disrupted academic operations and were sporadically accompanied by violent incidents. In a recent survey of Jewish students, Eitan Hersh (2024) found that Jewish students reported that between April 2022 and November/December 2023, there was an increase in the perceived cost of working with Jewish organizations, taking part in Jewish activities, or simply revealing that they were Jewish.

They taught us not to ask the “good” questions. “You were asking a ‘bad question,’” I have often been told. What is a “bad” question? It is equivalent to the saying “it is more complex than you think.” They taught us not to ask what seems the most obvious to ask. For instance, why on TV, do they show war and all you see there is men [in uniform]? Why, is this war not ours as well?

—Daphna Golan-Agnon, Next Year in Jerusalem

The prevailing assumption in the media discourse is that on 7 October, Israel was taken by surprise when Hamas squads launched an attack on the Gaza–Israel border. This event challenged the intelligence community's perception that Hamas had been effectively deterred. It also raised questions about the efficacy of border defenses backed by technological systems. To better understand the origins of these perceptions and the failures they created, it is necessary to delve into the unique role of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in Israeli politics.

A week after 7 October 2023, various visual-art initiatives began to awaken in a quest for self-expression. A torrent of images started to flood the network, their modes of expression and non-expression as varied as were the voices and identities. Some artists plunged into shock and silence, others found comfort in artmaking, and yet others turned their concern toward the Other through art or other media. Some responses were personal and spontaneous, while others answered calls from art associations and institutions. Ad hoc groups for and of abductees’ families organized, viewing visual language not only as a form of expression but also, and primarily, as a political instrument to influence policymakers and domestic and global public opinion.

The limited literature on populism in Israel allows for an examination of the conceptual debate on populism's practical implications. By employing a contemporary conceptualization of populism to the case of Israel, this article examines the conventional wisdom classifying Menachem Begin and Benjamin Netanyahu as populists. The article utilizes a multimethod analysis combining content analysis and comparative case studies, analyzing the rhetoric and policymaking of both leaders. The content analysis reveals that Begin exhibited a relatively low degree of populism, a characteristic similarly observed in the early years of Netanyahu's leadership. However, a comprehensive evaluation of their policies and legislative actions highlights a significant divergence. Begin consistently adhered to liberal democratic principles, while Netanyahu's illiberal tendencies were evident from his first term in office. The findings further indicate that Netanyahu's populism progressively intensified throughout his tenure, particularly gaining momentum after 2015.

At the establishment of the Israeli Air Force (IAF) in 1948, women served as pilots. In the mid-1950s, however, the IAF decided to remove women from flight training and ground all female pilots. That policy persisted until the High Court of Justice's ruling in the Alice Miller case (1995). This article narrates the experiences of women pilots before and after the IAF decision to ground women, demonstrating that the decision was based not on professional or security considerations but on patriarchal social attitudes; that the excluded pilots and trainees protested against their discrimination but were silenced; and that changes in IAF policy with respect to women pilots reflect broader attitudes about gender in Israeli society.

Few researchers dealing with the restoration of a country's international image have explored the cognitive motivations of target audiences. Using relations between Israel and Poland as a case study, this article examines the extent to which an audience is attached to problematic history. The results of a survey measuring the attitudes of Israeli Jews toward Poland indicate that, while at first most respondents declared an interest only in deepening their historical knowledge of the country, as more detailed questions were asked, the same respondents revealed greater curiosity about contemporary Poland. This article explains the discrepancy by identifying two distinct strategies adopted by respondents: one that produces responses more consistent with mainstream sentiment, and one driven more by respondents’ personal interests. Examining the factors that determine declared and revealed preferences can enhance researchers’ understanding of how human interest is constructed while offering practitioners guidance in restoring a country's image.

The surge of far-right populist leaders around the world has raised the question of whether they can be moderated through their participation in government—a matter of scholarly contention. This article examines the political arc of Naftali Bennett, a populist-nationalist politician who served as Israel's prime minister from June 2021 to June 2022. Until his unexpected ascension to the top political post, Bennett regularly employed populist Us vs. Them rhetoric while backing populist measures as a government minister that often put him at odds with the security establishment. Upon assuming the premiership, however, Bennett, following an instrumental logic, abandoned his polarizing rhetoric and embraced, instead, a statesmanlike approach to governing. The case of Bennett illustrates partial moderation undergone by a populist-nationalist politician's rise to power.

Fromer, Yoav, and Ilan Peleg, eds. The Americanization of the Israeli Right (Tel Aviv: CSUS Press, Tel Aviv University, 2024) 369pp. Free.

Akirav, Osnat. Parliamentary Representation of Political Minorities: Arab Palestinian Legislators in Israel (Cham, Switzerland: Springer Nature, 2024). 292 pp., $129.99 (hardback).

Salamon, Hagar. Meat Matters: Ethnographic Refractions of the Beta Israel. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2023). 152 pp., $30.00 (paperback).

Penslar, Derek. J. Zionism: An Emotional State (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2023). 321 pp., $27.95 (paperback).

Nikolenyi, Csaba. Party Switching in Israel: A Historical and Comparative Analysis (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2023). 239 pp., $34.95 (paperback).